Courting Miss Hattie (48 page)
Smiling at the appealing sight, Hattie steeled herself for his disapproval and lack of cooperation. Casually she walked to the back step, heedless of the rain, as if on a carefree summer jaunt. "I've got your breakfast in the warming oven," she said, "and the rest of the food is ready to load."
"Load for what?" he asked as he helped her out of her slicker.
"To take to the river," she said, walking into the house. "I see no reason for me to carry lunch clear down there when I can cook it and help at the same time."
Reed stared at her, dumbfounded, for a moment,
then
the import of her statement became clear. "Hattie, you've got no business working on that levee," he said flatly
.
She retrieved his breakfast from the warming oven and set it on the table, then turned to him, hands on her hips in a defiant stance. "I think it'd do you good to remember, Plowboy, that it's
my
levee."
He crossed his arms stubbornly in reply. "It's
your
levee,
but you're
my
wife. That river is getting wilder and more dangerous every minute, and I don't want you out there."
Feeling an undeniable thrill at his protectiveness, Hattie still held her ground. "If it's too dangerous for me, then it's too dangerous for you."
"Somebody has to keep the river back. I'm not about to let a whole season's work got to waste if I can avoid it."
"I'm not about to either. I talked to Uncle Ed yesterday. He says it's too big a job for two men."
"Well, of course it is, but two men
is
all we are, and believe me, one extra person, even if that person is yourself, isn't going to make a difference."
"How about a whole crew, Plowboy? Could a whole crew make a difference?"
Reed looked at her quizzically for a moment before guessing her intent. "Uncle Ed and the rice crew are coming to help?"
She grinned. "Sure. Along with just about everybody else. I sent word to Millie that we need help."
A smile spread across Reed's face as he pondered this new development. "By
gawd
, with more men, Hattie, we just might be able to hold it off."
* * *
The river was high and wild when they arrived at the rice field. Hattie set up a cook camp at the top of the bluff and was shortly joined by Mary Tyler, her daughters-in-law, and young Marybeth.
Since Uncle Ed's rice-cutting crew had come to help, it had seemed only normal for Clive Tyler and his sons to join them. Cal, George, and Andy all showed up, and even Emma and her husband, Sidney were there, bringing with them the employees from his cotton gin.
Preacher Able and Millie arrived about
"I'm sure they all said, 'I told you so,'"
Hattie replied. "Nobody believed that we could raise rice here."
"Maybe not," Millie said. "But most told the reverend they would be here to help this morning."
Millie's words proved to be true as wagon after wagon pulled up to Colfax Bluff and men scrambled down with shovels and tools to see what they could do to help.
Bessie Jane showed up a few minutes later in the company of her parents. Arthur Turpin brought a load of lumber to help shore up the sagging earthwork, and Harmon directed the men to unload it.
"Harmon had this idea last night," Bessie Jane explained to Hattie, "about how a frame might help brace things. He was saying all the things that he'd need and wondering how we could get them and if his idea might be worth the cost."
The young woman straightened her shoulders. "I just walked into Daddy's store this morning and told him that I hadn't got my wedding present yet and I wanted it today."
Hattie found herself smiling at this new independent and freethinking Bessie Jane, and hugged the young woman.
The most surprising arrival, to Hattie's mind, was
Ancil
Drayton. He'd barely pulled his wagon to a stop before the kids jumped out of the back.
Ancil
, carrying an enormous umbrella, escorted a large, full-figured woman to the tarp-covered camp.
"Mrs. Tyler, ladies," he addressed the women. "I want you all to meet Mrs.
Maimie
Blackburn from over to
Carson
's Flat."
Ancil's
color was unusually high as he added, "The widow
Blackburn
has graciously consented to become my wife."
The big woman punctuated his words with a giant "huh-
ruh
," and the women all voiced their congratulations.
"Somebody needed to take a hand to those little heathens he's a 'raising," Widow Blackburn said, "and that's the truth of it." Glancing over her shoulder, she hollered like a referee at a
hogcalling
. "Mary Nell!
Git
them children under this tent afore I find a switch and take it to your hind end!"
Mary Nell, who was back to girlish skirt lengths, her hair in pigtails, quickly did as she was bid.
Turning back to Hattie, the Widow Blackburn added, "Them children of
Ancil's
are a pretty good bunch if the truth be told. Along with my four, it makes quite a family." Smiling at Mary Nell's haste to obey, the widow confided, "That oldest little gal got a little too big for her britches. But I raised three sisters afore I was wed, and I know all there is to know about
takin
' the starch out of a sassy stitch."
Cyl
and
Ada
raced to Hattie's side. "What can we do to help, Miss Hattie?"
Cyl
asked anxiously. "Ma Blackburn said
we's
comin' to give you and Mr. Reed a neighborly hand."
Hattie reached out to touch the sweet friendly face she had missed so much. "And so you can," she told the girls cheerfully. "Do you know how to make camp biscuits?" When both girls shook their heads sadly, Hattie smiled. "Good, because I want to teach you how to do it just the way I like them."
Working with
Cyl
and little
Ada
, Hattie left the Widow
Blackburn to help with the cooking and Mary Nell to watch
Buddy and the widow's two youngest.
"She's nice,"
Cyl
whispered in Hattie's ear.
Hattie smiled with pleasure. "I'm glad."
"She's not you, of course,"
Cyl
went on. "But she's got real set ways of
gettin
' things done and she don't allow for no shirking." With the wisdom that rode so strangely on the youngster, she added, "I think she's good for
Morning wore into afternoon as more and more neighbors, friends, and even some of the pickers out of work from the weather showed up to see if man could stop nature at the edge of Colfax Bluff.
With the crowd of men working against time to brace the levee, the women had their hands full. Hot coffee and plenty of soup and camp biscuits were ready every minute. There was no stop in making meals. Voluntarily, some men would make their way to the tent while others continued to dig and shovel, raising the height of the levee in some places, repairing small breaks in others.
Hattie watched worriedly as her husband worked longer and harder than the other men. Finally, filling a plate and grabbing a cup of coffee, she apprised the other women of her mission. With their encouragement and warning to take care, she crept down the muddy slippery slope to the levee.
Reed was using the back of his shovel to pound a mud poultice on a small but persistent crack in the levee when a word from another man caused him to look up. Seeing Hattie, he cursed under his breath and handed his shovel over. Slogging over to her, he took her arm and escorted her from the dangerous mud embankment. "Damnation, Hattie!" he said angrily. "I told you to stay off this levee!"
"Don't you curse at me, Plowboy," she snapped back. "I'd be content to stay under that nice dry tarp if I had a husband who had enough sense to come in out of the rain once in a while!"
She was right, he knew, but he doggedly tried to present his side of it. "It's my field."
"No, it's
my
field, and I'm not even allowed on the levee." Gesturing to the mud-splattered crew, she added, "These men wouldn't be here if they thought you were too lazy to do your own work. You've got nothing to prove, Reed Tyler, except that lack of nourishment will lay you low as quickly as any other man."
Despite being exhausted, soaked to the skin, and dispirited, Reed found himself smiling at his wife. Taking the tin plate from her hands, he looked under the sodden dishcloth at the damp, already cold fare she'd brought him. "This would undoubtedly lay me low quicker than the other men," he said. "It could be a major embarrassment for us both, Mrs. Tyler."
His teasing prompted her to mock outrage, and he slid his arm around her waist as if to make up to her. Arm in arm, the two made their way back up the slope. Beneath the tarp they sat together near the fire and shared a meal.
Hattie watched as the men worked frantically. The river had risen quickly in the night, and salvaging the drooping waterlogged rice seemed more and more remote. To Hattie it looked impossible that so few men could fight off such a mighty onslaught of water.
"I can't believe all these folks turned out to help us," Reed said as he finished his meal.
"I guess they know that we'd do the same for them. They're just glad we don't have to."
He gulped the rest of his coffee, kissed her quickly,
then
was gone. Hattie watched him head back to the fight and couldn't help but worry. The rice was so important to him.
Please let him
win,
she prayed silently.
Ancil
appeared for a quick meal also, and Hattie couldn't help but make comparisons.
Ancil
looked like a drowned rat, his thin hair lying in disorganized strands across his head, his clothes plastered to his long, lanky frame. Momentarily, she thought of the warmth of her husband's embrace and the sweet taste of his hot passionate peaches. She made the right choice, and she knew she would never regret it.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught
Ancil
taking a healthy pinch at the widow's ample buttocks, and she thanked heaven for her reprieve.
Forget what I said about the rice, Lord. I've already had more favors than I deserve.
CHAPTER
25
D
usk
brought discouragement to the tired and overworked men. Harmon's bracing system might have worked in a lesser flood or if it had been built sooner, but it was obvious that the valiant efforts of the men, mud, and two-by-fours were not going to hold back the onslaught of nature.
Wagon by wagon, their friends and neighbors began to leave.
"It's too dangerous down here for my boys,"
Ancil
told Reed. Glancing at the boisterous youngsters trying to do a man's work on the muddy levee, Reed agreed. "It's too dangerous for all of us," he said. Speaking loudly enough to capture the attention
of most of the men, he called, "I thank you all for coming, but I don't want anybody hurt down here. That far north end is
not going to make it through the night, and there won't be any joy in saving the south cuts if we lose a man to the river."